When thinking of what is fundamentally different between a Hindu worldview and Western one, a few primary points come to mind. Here, by Western we refer in specific to the Judeo-Christian worldview, which also includes the Islamic and is alternately called the Abrahamic worldview.
The seeming difference of a monotheistic conception vs. a polytheistic one is relatively superficial, in that it more describes an outcome of the fundamental than the fundamental itself. But deeper within, it elides the occurrence in one a healthy comfort with the very idea of multiplicity, and in the other an existential antagonism to it. This difference reveals itself beyond theological windows - for instance in the discipline of history.
On the Multiplicity of Time
Stalwarts such as Prof. Balagangadhara, Dr. Adluri and Dr. Bagchee have detailed how contemporary enterprises such as Indology and philology are stymied by a uni-linear notion of time, itself derived from the historicism that was necessary to uphold the Judeo-Christian worldview. How this happens can be understood as a series of steps human trajectory has taken in the past ~2000 years.
- The prior state - of many cultures, many traditions, and equally as many histories ie - as many stories of a people about their own past.
- The emergence of Judaism - a specific community with a specific tale about its own past.
- The breakaway of Christianity from Judaism and consequently, its move towards becoming a global religion ie - making itself available to the Gentiles, or non-Jews, such as Greeks, Romans and others.
- The necessity then, from the above, of identifying a world history, where the multiple histories of multiple cultures had to be mapped to a singular and specific Christian story of creation, man and God's interventions in the world.
- The resultant clash of a variety of views on history and time - cyclical, helical, non-linear - against the monistic, linear view of time, which presumed that all other views could be methodically sanitized to extract their proper place in the new, Christian world history.
- The inheritance of this linear view of time by the natural and social sciences developed in Europe, particularly in history and philology, culminating in -
- The absolute butchery of Indian tradition at hands of...
